


I Just Wanna Feel Something Again(Growing Up Has Made Me Numb)

by orphan_account



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Established Relationship, F/F, Fluff, Hopeful Ending, Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-04 01:15:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21189116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: "She remembers on her first victors’ ball when the music and the people and the Capital got too loud, and the giant ball from feeling too small to breathe in. She went outside and met Catra, the seventeen-year-old victor of District eleven. Catra just looked at her, frowned and said, “Just so you know, princess, it won’t get better, you never really leave.” Adora hadn’t realized how true those words were."ORAdora and Catra are mentors and victors of the Hunger Games. When Adora finds out the rebellion isn't dead, everything changes.





	I Just Wanna Feel Something Again(Growing Up Has Made Me Numb)

Catra and Adora only see each other once every year, in the beautiful capital of a country that is anything but. Both clad in lavish outfits and matching hairstyles, under a shining chandelier, dancing on a spotless crystal floor and chatting with men and women who know nothing of the horrors they’ve seen. They pretend for their fans that they worked their entire life to win their respective Hunger Games because they wanted to honor their districts. What they don’t know is that you shouldn’t pick fights with people who have already lost everything. They smile and wave at the press and laugh at the sadistic ideas the game makers have for the tributes next year. They become as fake as the city they despise. 

Catra and Adora are victims and victors of the annual hunger games. They’re told winning is the way out, that you get to go home, but no one really leaves the arena dead or Alive. They’re the one's death left behind, stuck with sending kids into the arena knowing they’ll be forced to either kill or be killed.

Adora knows Catra is a much better mentor than her. Catra’s learned to bury her feelings deep down where no one could ever find them and teach the tributes how to go down fighting better than Adora ever could. Neither of them has lived to see anyone join them as mentors, and both should be more than used to death by now, but Adora can’t stop getting attached.

She hates it, seeing these kids look at her with hope. Sometimes they’ll call her She-Ra, her nickname from the arena and look at her she can protect them. She was the lucky one, the winner, the one who made it out, yet she can’t stop feeling like maybe death would have been a better fate to sending these kids to die knowing she can’t do anything.

She’s snapped out of her thoughts when a familiar silhouette stroll towards her. 

“Hi, Adora,” Catra whispers in her ear, and suddenly she’s very aware of how close Catra’s body is to hers, and Adora curses herself for allowing herself to get caught up in thought. This isn’t the time or place for that. She can’t let the capital see how much they care about each other, because then Catra would be gone

“Catra” Adora replies neutrally, staring right into Catra’s eyes, biting her lip nervously She scans her eyes up and down Catra. She’s wearing an expensive black suit, with her a smooth red shirt loosely buttoned. Her sleek black combat boots are a staple per usual. Her hands are stuffed in her pockets and she has her trademark Catra smirk on. Her duel colored eyes glow in the dim ballroom. Adora had every detail of Catra’s eyes carefully cataloged, so used to staring into them.

Before Catra, Adora didn’t have any friends. As an orphan in twelve she was so focused in twelve that friendship was a luxury she didn’t have time for; after the games it was impossible to connect with people anymore. She remembers on her first victors’ ball when the music and the people and the Capital got too loud, and the giant ball from feeling too small to breathe in. She went outside and met Catra, the seventeen-year-old victor of District eleven. Catra just looked at her, frowned and said, “Just so you know, princess, it won’t get better, you never really leave.” Adora hadn’t realized how true those words were.

And while she struggles to remember the rest of her victor tour, she remembers the victors’ ball perfectly. She remembers her quiet, “I know.” At Catra ominous advice. She remembers the sudden need to feel something anything, that wasn’t pain or grief, or the anxiety that followed her out of the arena. And then suddenly she was kissing Catra, and she felt how Catra was the same as her. Catra didn’t kiss her for love or romance or any of the things neither of them would ever get to experience. Catra just understood the need. What it was like to be seventeen and already have your life planned out for you. What it was like to live past the end of your life.

And so, year after year, Catra and Adora found themselves in various balconies, bathrooms, and storage closets, enjoying themselves in the dark. Anywhere the cameras couldn’t find them.

Sometimes they’d just talk. They’d talk about everything, life in their respective districts. Eleven and twelve, the districts the capital left behind, each with only one victor. Sometimes they’d talk about the capital and Hordak’s parties and laugh at the things his guests would say to them. Adora loved all these conversations with Catra when the two of them would never be interrupted by anything other than the sound of themselves kissing. This year though, it was different. 

“Catra, do you know who Mara is?” Adora whispered excitedly.  
“Who?” Catra replied, her foot slowly tapping the pristine floor of the closet.  
“In District twelve I found this old journal, written by someone named Mara after the Dark Days.” Adora paused, searching Catra’s face for a reaction but Catra’s face stayed eerily blank.  
“She was a rebellion fighter, only seventeen and they drafted her into the very first hunger games. She wrote this book, about all the amazing things that happened in the rebellion. Kids didn’t have to worry about being drafted into a deathmatch, and they got to pursue careers! They had choices! People from different districts got to interact. There was real freedom Catra! And-“Adora moved to continue but Catra cut her off.  
“Adora this is crazy. What are you going to do, run off to an annihilated district and join a dead rebellion?” Catra scoffed. 

“That’s the thing Catra, it’s not a dead rebellion.” 

“That’s ridiculous, Adora, District Thirteen is gone,” Catra repeated was a look in her eyes telling Adora that Catra didn’t want to be having this conversation.  
But Adora refused to stop. She refused to let any more tributes, more kids’ lights go out to the inhumanity of the games. 

“That’s what they want you to think. It’s Thirteen’s failsafe. In Mara’s journal, she has pages and pages of maps and records of a tunnel system. Don’t you get it Catra? The rebellion isn’t dead. It’s alive.” She finished, breathing heavily. 

“Stop!” shouted Catra, “So what now you have a hunch that thirteen’s not dead you’re just going to leave me here with Hordak?” 

“No Catra! I want you to come with me! You're my best friend, I need you.” Adora pleaded. 

“Adora you're being crazy. This is crazy, we can’t just leave.”

“Why not Catra? People are dying and we have a chance to stop it!” Adora said. 

“Because it’s us, Adora. Hordak and his crew, they’re nothing! We could rule the world together, with No Hordak or capital to hold us back!” 

“Is that what you want Catra? To rule the world?”

Maybe Adora didn’t know Catra as well as she thought she did. Maybe kissing someone once every year didn’t make them anything. Maybe it was just their messed up brains trying to process the horrors they’ve been through. 

Because Catra didn’t care. Catra drifted through life and was able to stop getting attached to her tributes. Catra refused to talk about anything that had happened to stop herself from feeling it. Adora couldn’t do that. Every tribute that Adora let into that arena was another child Adora had sent to their death, and Adora just couldn’t do it anymore, right when she had the chance to change it.

“I need to go,” Adora mumbled out, stumbling out of the dark storage closet.  
She here Catra call out, “Adora wait!” but she keeps running, swerving between guests desperate to getaway. Why can’t Catra understand? Why would Catra make her leave the one good thing in her life?

Adora knows she needs to calm down; Hordak can’t see her like this, he’ll find a way to use it against her. 

She mingles with the guests. She tries out Hordak’s exotic food. She listens to head game maker Entrapta gush about her experiments and finds it hard to believe that she’s the one in charge of designing death traps year after year. 

Adora can’t shake the feeling that someone knows what she thinking. That one of the peacekeepers will drag her away to a cell where her tongue will be cut off and be turned into an avox destined to be even more of a slave to the capital. 

She doesn’t stop moving, slowly switching to each corner of the seemingly endless ballroom. She doesn’t see any peacekeepers and she doesn’t see Catra. “Is it really worth it?” She thinks. Is it worth fighting for a rebellion when the person I care about is right here? Is it worth leaving Catra for this? 

Adora would never stop missing Catra, but she knows she has to leave, even if Catra won’t go with her. She knows if she doesn’t, she’ll break a little more with every kid she mentors. Mara left her journal for a reason, with the hope that someone would see and change something. Adora was that someone.

Catra made her choice. Adora needed to make hers.

Taking a deep breath Adora started moving to the exit when someone stopped her.

“Adora, my girl where are you going?”

Adora froze. Shadow Weaver.

She quickly turned around, slapping a fake smile on her face. “Oh hi, Shadow Weaver! Didn’t see you there! I was just going to get some air, I ate too much of that delicious cake, not feeling so great.” She lied, hoping Shadow Weaver wouldn’t notice the blatant lie. 

Thankfully she didn’t, too enthralled with impressing Hordak. She left Adora alone with a quick “Don’t stay out too long, we’d all miss our favorite Victor.”

Adora used to see Shadow Weaver as a friend and a mentor, someone she could rely on, despite her dislike of Catra.

Now Shadow Weaver was showing her true colors. Shadow Weaver just saw her as a trophy, a shiny victor to entertain snakes with.

Adora felt sick. She needs to get out, to leave, to run far far away from here.

She practically ran out of the mansion, tearing her silk dress in a sharp corner. 

Just as she takes her first breath of cold air-freedom, she feels a familiar hand grab her wrist.

“Adora, come back inside” Catra whispers from behind her, “please.”

Adora could go inside and just forget about it all. Forget about Mara, forget about thirteen and the rebellion. Learn to forget about all the kids she’s trained and will train in favor of spending every year in closets with Catra. 

For a second, she almost says yes. But that’s not living, that’s hiding. 

Adora refuses to hide anymore. She can’t do what Catra wants her to do. It’s time she starts doing what she wants. Start living.

“No,” Adora responds steel in her voice, turning around to face Catra.

Catra’s voice loses the vulnerability in an instant. She clenches her fists at her side. “So this is it then? You’re leaving me just like that?” She says irritation leaking through.

“I’m not leaving you, Catra! I wish you would come with me! Do you think you’re the only one feeling abandoned?” Adora shouts. Hot angry tears appear in her eyes. Catra is staring at her and Adora almost wants to laugh; it’s like looking in a mirror. She can see Catra’s just as frustrated and hurt as she is. Both of them are losing each other, one to the rebellion, and one to the capital.

They’ll never leave. The capital will keep twisting their minds, and their lives; they’ll control them like puppets. Adora knows that joining the rebellion is just a different side of the same war. 

Catra knows it too. 

They were never meant to be together. Fate would always be playing catch up. 

They stand there, in the cold November air, puffs of air floating away from their mouths. There are a few street lamps nearby, but otherwise the abandoned ally is pretty dark. 

Funny how she’s always meeting Catra in the dark.

They both lean in bit by bit, and Adora breathing fast because Catra’s so close and his lips are right there.

Catra moves first, like always and in a split second, they’re intertwined. Catra tastes like cinnamon and smoke and home. She put her hands around Catra’s shoulders, gliding over her smooth blazer. Adora pulls Catra in, desperately denying what’s about to happen when they break away. Soon they’ll go to their respective sides, back into the arena. 

Right now though, this is theirs. Neither the capital nor the rebellion can have this. 

They break away, panting, staring at each other. Adora will never get tired of Catra’s yellow and blue eyes. 

“So,” Catra says, “I guess you gotta go now, princess.”

“I guess I do” Adora whispers back. 

“I’ll cover for you. Don’t forget about me in tunnel town.” 

“I would never” Adora turns to Catra one last time. The silence has never felt so loud “I love you.” She confesses, surprising even herself. 

Catra grins, “I know.” 

Adora laughs, salutes Catra one last time, and leaves the dark ally way. 

Something tells her this won’t be the last time she meets Catra in the dark.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments and kudos appreciated. Title from Sober Up by AJR.


End file.
